After write, write, write it�s sell, sell, sell
Writersworld newsletter, Febuary 25, 2002

One of the benefits of this century is that you do not have to wait for a copy of a book no matter where it is published in the world. The dot.com booksellers will service your inquiry on demand and often at a competitive price. If there�s a new book in America or Australia covering a subject you need to research you can obtain it in days.

How to Market You and Your Book by Richard F.X. O�Connor is such a volume. Don�t imagine that your publisher will do much to help when it comes to marketing your work. Something like 80 per cent of the promotional budget goes to 20 per cent of its authors leaving a pittance for the mid-list and new authors.

But by sheer effort, drive and a bundle of ideas you can make a difference to your sales.

Your input is even more valuable in the field of self-publishing, printing on demand or non-fiction.

O�Connor not only knows the business inside from Doubleday and Waldenbooks, he can communicate this knowledge succinctly. He covers marketing, promotion and retailing.

�To write,� he warns, �is not enough. Like it or not we must sell ourselves to others.�

You will quickly perceive that what O�Connor has to say about the American book scene parallels the position in the U.K.

What is the most potent way of selling a book? Despite the influence of television, posters and advertising, it is still word of mouth. It�s rule 250 in O�Connor�s primer.

It works like this: each of us has 250 contacts � family, friends, colleagues, associates and critics. In turn they have 250 etc. . .

Never discount your own efforts. How to Market You and Your Book is published by Coeur de Lion Books and is available on amazon.com.

Here�s an ambition: �I will. . .I will get myself into the next edition of the International Author�s and Writers Who�s Who.� If you can, you can certainly say you have arrived on the world literary scene. This standard work of reference, updated every two years, is published by The Melrose Press at �115. If you do not buy a copy yourself you should insist that your local library has one.

Another standard reference book from the same source is The International Who�s Who in Poetry and Poets� Encyclopaedia. This contains details of around 4,000 leading and emerging poets, extensive appendices on poetry organisations and publishers and a fascinating compilation of 8000 influential authors and poets for the last two centuries. It retails at �105.

Still on works of reference how is your command of literary terms? Of course you know roman � clef, but zeugma, magic realism, rime riche, lipogram? Can you define them simply with an example?

With the help of the Concise Dictionary of Literary Terms from the OUP at �7.99 you can confound the most erudite Eng. Lit.Prof. If your grammar is on the shaky side - that is if you went to school in the 1960s or 70s � the same publisher�s Everyday Grammar will help to dispel that handicap.

Switching quickly to �how to� volumes I find a new one in the Idiot�s Guide series which has had global success. This time the subject is Screenwriting and it is written by Skip Press and published by Alpha Books. Skip knows a thing or three about working inside Hollywood and covers the filmwriter�s craft from structure to presentation. If you want a screenplay to be taken seriously by agent or studio this book is essential reading. At $16.95 it could make the difference between rejection and a fortune.

A & C Black, famous for the Writer�s & Artist�s Year Book has just released two new handbooks: Writing Successful Textbooks and Writing a Play. Good timing seeing how many teachers have switched sensationally to writing.

The market for textbooks is huge hence an investment in this handbook could produce substantial dividends. But competition is growing all the time. Author Anthony Haynes is a Commissioning Editor for Education and Professional Subjects and deals daily with the problems facing writers.

Steve Gooch has used his experience as a writer, teacher and literary manager for his handbook, Writing a Play. Chunks of this book provide fertile material for workshop discussion while financial practicalities are not ignored. Textbooks sells at �9.99 and Writing a Play for �1 less.

Our parallel publication in the United States is Writer�s Digest which has collated a selection of its articles on the art of short story writing. It�s a vivid, punchy collection, long on exhortation and �can do� philosophy. In her preface, Joyce Carol Oates claims there are no rules. We�ll go along with that. The best section in the book, which retails at $14.99, is Bonny Golightly�s essay on dialogue.